Lynxes
When I was a boy, the confectioner of mixed feelings
had not yet opened his shop, mice waiting to gnaw
encrusted corners, the paying customers
feeling a little dirty. Shadows were more distinct
and irony, an unknown country.
When I was a boy, the fever washed in and out.
Sometimes it sounded sad, like a seashell held to the ear.
I knew, of course, the sea wasn’t really there,
that I wasn’t drowning at all.
What he whispered didn’t seem quite so,
“You will miss this when you grow up.”
Not the sticky hand inside my shorts, nor
the hush money, but a horizon where something
lay waiting just for me, the lynxes at alphabet’s end.
When I was a boy was an analogue for “when I
was a boy,” 45 I could play and play until
I was nothing but scratches and pops. The fever broke.
I couldn’t taste the dirt and sugar,
just a green seasick I couldn’t throw up.
He told me the words, “when I was a boy,” are
a prompt for nostalgia, as if the shadows
could turn back into ghosts. Yesterday
closed its eyes, and the sea has lost its echoes.
The Good Men Project (September 2017).